Rosie Thomas 4-Book Collection: Other People’s Marriages, Every Woman Knows a Secret, If My Father Loved Me, A Simple Life. Rosie Thomas
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to speculate about what they might think of her. Marcelle let these reflections slip away out of her head almost as soon as they had entered it. It was enough to do to hold herself quietly, only half listening and half watching.
Vicky was smiling, busy with her arrangements for the evening, and Star was intent on arranging her flowers, her dark face momentarily lightened by her pleasure in them. Janice strolled across the lawn to the children, her hands in the pockets of her shorts.
The women had drawn closer. No one had mentioned the change in the air, but each of them was aware of it. There was the thin vibration of watchfulness and anxiety between them, but also the low, steady note of friendship.
Marcelle’s eyes fixed on her children again.
Jonathan was almost the same age as William Frost, but he was physically much smaller. There seemed to be an anxiety about him, a tentativeness that made him poke nervously at the rounders ball instead of hitting out when it was pitched to him. When her turn came, Daisy was bolder. She swung out with the bat and the ball soared in a triumphant arc and dropped into the green waves of ivy and honeysuckle at the far end of the garden.
‘Daisy, Daisy’s lost the ball, we’ll never find it in there …’
‘It’s not fair …’
The children’s voices rose in complaint and then faded again as Janice found another ball and threw it to them.
‘They should be here soon,’ Vicky said, meaning the husbands.
But it was another half-hour before they did arrive, in their tennis shoes, wet-haired from their swim in the Frosts’ pool. They came out into the garden with beer cans in their hands, full of the reports of their game, breaking the net that the women had woven between them.
Jimmy and Gordon had beaten Andrew and Michael, but the match had been close enough for them to feel satisfied. Gordon put his hand on Vicky’s shoulder.
‘Are we very late? I’m sorry. They took us to five sets, by some fluke, and it was eight six in the last one. Do you want me to start barbecuing?’
‘Well done, Daddy,’ Mary Ransome said. She wound her arm around his leg and he rested his other hand on the top of her head, feeling the fine hair warmed by the sun. The three of them stood for a moment, connected by his hands, until Vicky moved easily away.
‘Do the children’s sausages first,’ she ordered him.
‘And what about me?’ Jimmy demanded of Mary. ‘Don’t I get a well done?’
He swung her up by her arms so that she shrieked with delighted fear, and then he settled her on his shoulders and cantered across the grass.
‘You’re a horse, well done, horse,’ Mary shouted.
Marcelle sat in her deck-chair. She had watched Michael as he came out of the French doors, the last of the group, and saw how he glanced at her, lifted one hand in a wave and then went to where Star and Andrew and Janice were standing, laughing at something one of them said as he wiped the froth of beer from his top lip. Marcelle did not even know what she had been hoping for from him, but the denial of it cut her so she had to blink and the hard edges of the terrace in front of her grew threateningly blurred.
Jimmy lifted Mary over his head and set her on the ground again. His shoulders and arms ached pleasurably from the hours of tennis, and the glow of the win was still with him. He stood in front of Marcelle’s deck-chair, his shadow falling across her. He noticed that she was wearing big earrings that looked too large for her face.
‘Hey, Mar, you haven’t got a drink.’
‘I haven’t, have I? I’ll have a glass of wine, whatever there is.’
He brought her one, and one for himself, and then sat down on the flagstones at her feet, resting his back against her legs.
There were wood-pigeons in the tall trees. The thought of Lucy came into Jimmy’s head, followed by a surge of relief that Darcy was not here. It was more than a week since he had heard from Lucy, and he was beginning to be afraid that she might tell her father. Jimmy had resolved on each successive morning that he would telephone her and determine when the abortion would take place, but each day he had found some reason for not making the call.
Marcelle felt the warmth of Jimmy’s shoulder. It seemed to spread through her, and she realized that she was cold. She touched the collar of his shirt with the tips of her fingers, intrigued in spite of her detachment by the solidity of him, the prickle of rufous hairs at the nape of his neck and the scent of beer and swimming pool that emanated from him. By contrast Michael had become insubstantial, slipping away from her, so that on the rare occasions when they did touch it surprised them both and they drew back, unsure of themselves. Neither of them spoke of this new degree of separation between them.
Marcelle found that she wanted to press her face against Jimmy’s neck. She wanted to cry and have him stroke her hair and murmur comfort to her. She was appalled by her own weakness.
‘Your fingers are cold, Mar,’ Jimmy said, turning to face her. She withdrew her hand at once but he seized it and began to rub it between his own.
‘Talk to me,’ Marcelle said, to cover her distress.
‘What shall I tell you?’
She saw that Jimmy was pleased with himself and the evening.
Tell me you can see me, that I’m not invisible, that I still exist, Marcelle cried silently. Aloud she said, ‘Oh, whatever you like. Some gossip.’
He pretended to think. He did not like the idea of gossip now; it had become uncomfortable to him. The throaty calls of the wood-pigeons seemed to grow louder.
‘Hmm. Gossip. Do you know, I don’t think there is any? Dull bunch, aren’t we?’
Michael sat astride one of the garden chairs, watching Gordon flipping sausages on the barbecue. As soon as he’d arrived in the Ransomes’ street Michael had been hoping for the sight of one of the Cleggs’ cars, and he had carried his disappointment inside with him in the vain hope that Hannah might somehow have arrived with one of the other couples, or even have sent some innocent-sounding message via Janice for him to hear. But there was no sign of her, and no word either, and now the evening stretched pointlessly ahead of him. He fiddled with the tongs, getting in Gordon’s way and not knowing what else to do.
At length the children were called to the table. The parents had another drink while Gordon turned their steaks on to the heat. The sun moved behind the trees and the dimensions of the garden seemed to change, expanding beyond the indistinct margins of green and grey.
The four couples were already sitting down to eat when the doorbell rang. Gordon went to answer it while Vicky hastily relaid the two places she had removed.
A moment later Darcy and Hannah emerged into the garden with Gordon at Darcy’s elbow on the other side from Hannah. The talk around the table stopped expectantly.
At first Michael could take in nothing but Hannah. She was wearing a vivid yellow linen shirt, and white trousers that stopped short of her bare ankles. The evening light seemed to brighten again and settle around her head. With this focusing came sharpened recollections, how taut and silky her skin had felt, the entire scent and taste of her, the wonderful secrecy of the curtained ottoman tent within her exotic shop and the infinity of mirrored reflections. He realized that he had half risen from his place, and made himself sit down again, awkwardly bumping the table as he did so. Darcy was no more than a dark shape beside Hannah.
There was a confused babble of greetings, but the only voices were the women’s. Jimmy sat unnaturally silent in his place, and Andrew was staring at Darcy.
Darcy detached himself from Hannah and Gordon and seemed to launch himself at the table. He loomed suddenly at the end of it, fists on the back of Gordon’s chair, surveying them. There was an instant’s quiet, even the children at their table falling silent, and then Darcy demanded,
‘What